2025 Excellence in Interpretation Awards

The annual Excellence in Interpretation Awards recognize outstanding contributions to the practice of interpretation and education by NPS employees. These awards were named the Freeman Tilden Awards for Excellence in Interpretation from 1981 to 2023.

National Recipients

Brown v. Board of Education 70th Anniversary Homecoming

Jeff Tully

Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park

On May 17, 2024, Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park celebrated the 70th anniversary of the seminal U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education (Brown) decisions. These unanimous verdicts—that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal"—were a foundational moment in the fight for civil rights in America. The park highlights stories from plaintiffs of the Brown cases, however many students’ stories have been lost or forgotten, and the teenagers at the school during the time of the decision are now in their 80s and 90s.

Park staff reached out to local community members, religious groups, and extended family members to create a list of former students to personally invite to a 70th Anniversary Homecoming event. As a result, more than 200 former students attended the Homecoming, which featured a former student panel discussion, activities for youth and families, and collection of oral histories and documents to add to the park archives. Park staff hopes that this same process can draw people in from the communities of the other Brown cases, eventually building a more complete picture of segregation in educational facilities and the resilience of students and families who helped end segregation.

Ted Johnson conducting oral history interviews (left) and Matt Hampsey performs at the New Orleans Jazz Museum (right).

Gullah Geechee Youth Heritage Music Performance Pilot

Ted Johnson, Matt Hampsey

Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve & New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park

The Gullah Geechee Youth Heritage Music Performance Pilot combined two closely related musical traditions to connect youth with Gullah Geechee culture, the Ring Shout, and the Easter Rock. Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve and New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, along with partners throughout the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, The Historic New Orleans Collection, and the National Council for Traditional Arts, created the program to foster the passing of cultural knowledge from one generation to the next.

Gullah Geechee youth connected with elders to learn about their culture rooted in the African traditions of enslaved people who toiled along the lower Atlantic coast. Youth participants mostly from Winnsboro, LA traveled with the Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble (the Rockers) to perform together with the Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters (the Shouters) from Darien, GA. This cultural exchange was designed to ensure that the Ring Shout and the Easter Rock will continue for future generations. The youth participants used the insights they gained in a series of concerts, including performances by the Shouters & the Rockers at the New Orleans Jazz Museum, Whitney Plantation, Central St. Matthews Community Center, and New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park. The joint performances allowed performers and audiences alike to appreciate the similarities and differences between the Gullah Geechee Ring Shout and the Louisiana Easter Rock, two African traditions that connect communities separated by hundreds of miles.

Highlights of this project also included the filming of Afro-Descendants Southern Roots Road Tour featuring the Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters & Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble, a short documentary taken from performances in South Louisiana during the summer of 2024 and two American Routes Live radio programs that aired on Juneteenth and Easter weekend. Both groups also recorded an album together at Esplanade Studios for a eventual release on Smithsonian Folkways to document the historic meeting of these two groups.

Matt and Ted cast a wide net of subject matter experts and partners to accomplish things that they would not have been able to do otherwise. This included Heather Hodges, The Historic New Orleans Collection; Dr Susan Roach, folklorist at Louisiana Tech University; Griffin Lotson, manager of Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters; Nick Spitzer, host of American Routes; and Blaine Waide, National Council for Traditional Arts.